In my series of posts on reconnecting with the world I have begun to consider and experiment with technology based approaches to become less connected and 'always on'.

The approach is analogous with setting boundaries within a relationship, specifically with what I need to do, what goals I can achieve in particular period of time and also to 'switch off' when I leave work.

One of the simplest methods of gaining headspace came from a passing judgment made by my friend, Francis. While out together one night. He noticed that I'd received a push notification from Gmail, and he said 'push for email? Anything ever that urgent?'.

He was right, nothing via email is ever that urgent.

Readdressing how and why we receive email might be the simples way to manage immense volumes of information pushed at us.

Living to work is a dangerous trap that we all easily fall into as work pressure mounts, as we climb the ladder, and as we take empowerment from owning whatever it is that we do. Easier still is not realising we've fallen into this mode of autopilot until it's too late.

Over the past three months I've spent an average of 65 hours a week at work, with countless hours on the phone to other management team members in addition to that—all outside of 'hours'. I feel clouded.

At first this would appear to be a problem with the system; employers are taking advantage of unsuspecting employees and asking them to work well above their weekly expectation. Surely unions, human rights groups and more would be picketing to bring an end to such slavery!

Michael Kutz, one of the founders of the Agile methodology, wrote a blog entry recently entitled Agile Is Dead noting that the word Agile is thrown around as the new management buzzword, and is all but ineffective.

Mike speaks ad nauseum about Agile being a verb, not a noun as it is incorrectly used throughout the software industry.

At it's heart agile is a practice, a methodology and a way of thinking. To become agile companies need to understand that in each of their projects there are three things: a scope, a budget and a deadline. In a Waterfall project we'd agree to all three at the beginning, with the deadline being largely impacted on scope.